VaynerMedia opens doors in Australia with Aussie expat leading the charge
VaynerMedia is officially in operation in the Australian market with business director Amy Bradshaw charged with growing the local business.
The Australian arm will be run under Bradshaw but report into the APAC operations in Singapore, with Bradshaw already looking for office space and talent to expand the team.
An employee of VaynerMedia since 2017, Bradshaw has served in both the New York office and most recently in London, where she was head of client partnerships.
The move sees owner Gary Vaynerchuk fulfil previous assertions that it was only a matter of time before the business was in operation in Australia.
“Australia was definitely always on the map for Gary,” Bradshaw told Mumbrella. “He has a lot of affinity for here. He has been out here I think for the past 12 years, every year. He started coming out here with his wine business.
Amy Bradshaw
“So definitely always on the radar. It’s probably earlier to be honest than what was planned pre-COVID and everything else, but nobody expected Singapore and APAC to grow as fast as they have either.”
Bradshaw put the earlier than planned start down to the entrepreneurial flow of VaynerMedia.
“That’s the benefit of working for an independent agency with an entrepreneurial founder like Gary,” she said. “Decisions get made very, very quickly. There’s not a whole lot of red tape or bureaucracy. And he’s ultimately the one who decides and that means a decision can be made quickly, this was a five minute phone call to be honest, very, very quickly.”
VaynerMedia Australia will position itself like the global business and offer the same services in the same manner. Globally, it describes itself as a creative and media agency and lists clients including PepsiCo, Subway, Unicef, YouTube and more.
Bradshaw hopes the Australian business can capitalise on significant disconnects she has noticed locally from discussing the current environment with a range of industry leaders.
“It has been interesting talking to clients,” she said. “I think there’s been some trends that we’re seeing in conversations, a little bit of frustration around the lack of integration between creative and media. I think that’s been a consistent theme we’ve been hearing with clients. And a lack of understanding how marketing efforts are really driving real business results.”
Bradshaw believes the integration that VaynerMedia has between creative and media is one of its strengths that will appeal to local clients, and something that the business has taken additional steps to ensure is strong.
“That’s what makes us different, even though a lot of agencies claim maybe there’s integration and maybe some of the holding companies have merged those companies together,” she explained. “We’ve worked really hard as an agency, even with those teams under one roof, to make sure that integration is happening on a daily level, even at the project level. But I think that’s what makes us different – we’ve been doing this for quite a few years now with the integration of these two teams.”
Vaynerchuk
With the Australian business reporting into APAC, Bradshaw said the local business would lean on APAC and the global business at times as well.
“We collaborate really closely, we sit within the APAC ecosystems – so VaynerMedia Australia will still report into Singapore,” she explained. “We’ll still leverage staff there as well. I think it would be remiss for us to try and do everything ourselves here when we have the expertise and existing talent in APAC as well.
“I also think it’s important to have people on the ground here that truly live and breathe the market day in, day out. Culture and understanding culture and trends and what’s going on is a big part of our philosophy.”
VaynerMedia is currently on the lookout for talent as it begins to staff up. While it isn’t ready to announce local clients, Bradshaw said, “We’re in a lot of conversations with different clients at the moment, some confirmed and just going through the process of getting them onboarded and ready to start.”
She told Mumbrella that the short term plan was to onboard new talent and clients and make everyone involved sure of what VaynerMedia offered and how it was different to agencies currently out there in the market.
The initial VaynerMedia Australia office will be in Sydney but Bradshaw is not ruling out hiring talent in other parts of Australia.
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Damian is the head of content at Mumbrella, overseeing all content and editorial within the business. He has worked as a journalist and communications consultant across a number of industries for over 15 years. He has been with Mumbrella for more than three years, initially running event content. Damian was previously print editor of AdNews.
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